I found a site called worditout.com that helps people create word collages. Most of the collages or "word clouds" are in English, but there are some Spanish users that also visit the site. What you do is generate a list of words and copy and paste it to the site's interface, and it creates amazing collages for you.
You can choose Spanish words from lists that you have created or select words at random. Some people create the collages with resumes or company profiles. You can actually create a vision statement or a mission statement with your selection of words. You can use it to study for school by developing charts of learning.
Another idea you can use to create the collages is the process of word association. You can start with a word and then list words that come up in your mind about each ensuing word. Brainstorm so that all your words will be in Spanish. For example, I started with the word "iglesia" and these are the words I came up with: "sacerdote, biblia, palabras, letras, alfabeto, libro, paginas, numeros, cuanto, cuesta, casa, ventanas, puerta and edificio." Take all the words you come up with and copy and paste it on the interface at worditout.com You will have a beautiful word collage which you generated from word association.
Celebrate Spanish words by thinking about which ones you will use. Once you start to generate words, your mind will naturally want to think of more, and you can create more collages from those. Seeing the words in print will make an impression in your mind, and you will have a visual of what words you want to think about and learn. Creating a collage will mentally stimulate you to keep on learning through print. Join the worditout community for free, and they don't ask you to sign up, so it is a easy way to keep learning Spanish words.

I found a site where poetry in Spanish is translated. This site is found at www.spanishpoems.blogspot.com There are various poems and the translations are written below them.
There are some interesting activities you can do with these poems. First of all, read the poems in Spanish. Can you understand the gist of the poems without the translation? See how much you can understand by reading the poem in Spanish. Then read the translation and see if you are right. If it is too difficult, try to see if you can understand some of the words instead. Were you able to define the words?
Another thing you can do is focus on the words that poets use in poetry. These are called poetic words. Write down the words separately in a column on a piece of paper. Look at the English translation and see if you can learn the meaning of the words. Try to memorize a few of them. You may not be able to memorize all of them, but collecting the words may help you focus on them.
You can also write the poetic words down on paper and cut them out individually. Arrange them later on a piece of paper and read them. Can you remember the meanings?
Working with poetic words and their meanings will help to give you a little bit of experience in translation. You will get a feel of how people work with words in two different languages. If you get the chance, write the words and their meaning next to them in a notebook and title them "poetic words." You will have a wonderful collection of Spanish words and appreciate their beauty not only in English but in Spanish.

Another way to learn Spanish is to delve into print. Gather some catalogs or magazines and find photos that really grab your attention. Find objects or words in the photos and ads.
Label the words and objects with the Spanish word for them. Use post - it notes to label the photo or write the words on a separate piece of paper or in a notebook.
Collect as many words as you can.
Another thing you can do is ask what is going on in the picture. Is there a story behind it? What is the model doing in the photograph? What are the objects doing? What are the words saying?
You can also write a story using the words you have labeled and collected. Write a small paragraph in Spanish using the words you have collected.
Print has so much to offer. There's a lot going on in the photos that can teach you.
Collect as many photos as you can and put them in a folder. Later, you can do this same activity with the rest of the photographs. Not only are you increasing your print literacy, you are getting familiar with the content you are researching.
Don't pass over print. It is an amazing medium for young and old.

I just visited the site for the newspaper "La Prensa Grafica." I made a beeline to the short poll they have on the front page. I often go to it to see what the subject matter is. It is short and sweet and always about a new topic. I recommend taking the poll.
You not only practice reading the questions, but you get practice reading the words and trying to translate them in your head. That develops marvelous skills. If you don't get the words, you can always look for clues in the articles or go find a dictionary. You can also use the internet to look up a word or phrase. Today, they focused on the words "espionaje" and "prontitud."
You also get statistics in numerals, so you can practice the numbers in Spanish. You can practice saying the numbers and practice the percents.
Visiting a newspaper's poll is a very fast way of keeping up your Spanish. Try to visit different ones in different papers today. It's a great way to stay informed on matters in Spanish.

I meet very outgoing people that want to only learn how to speak Spanish to others. I am more of a bookish sort. I like to spend time learning Spanish from books, newspapers, or even the internet. I find that in order to speak Spanish, you need exposure to print material. If you learn a word and put it in a sentence, you can also use it in conversations.
There are people that want to bypass the whole learning process and only speak colloquial Spanish. That is understandable. It takes time to sit and learn it. If you're an outgoing sort, you want to practice it more with outsiders. You want to be fluent in speaking Spanish.
I once met someone that only wanted to practice conversations in Spanish. He also wanted to find an interpreter to go abroad with him for business. He didn't seem to have a whole lot of time to study Spanish. So there is the problem with time.
I would say to practice patience when it comes to learning Spanish. Learning Spanish by yourself or listening to conversations on television will definitely help you get acclimated to Spanish. Practicing with another person or other people would solidify it.
It takes time to learn. No matter if you bypass the studying process and go straight to conversations, you still need time to perfect it.
You can loosen your tongue and practice speaking it. People may be patient to help you correct your mistakes. So you can learn to speak fluently in person with others.
No matter which way you decide to tackle Spanish, it's the motivation that counts. Don't lose your interest in learning it.
I hope you find the time in the New Year to practice Spanish or practice conversations.
Happy learning!

If you don't know already, this blog is for people that are trying to learn Spanish alone.
I call it solitary Spanish. I've thought of three other ideas to get you exposed to Spanish when it is difficult to do so.
One idea is to start a Spanish library. Once I went into a store that had all music in Spanish. What if you could go to a store that carried items in Spanish? It would mean buying and collecting books in Spanish. It would be a great hobby and keep information at hand. Just make some room on your shelves for the items.
Another idea is to write out conversations in Spanish on paper. Choose words and phrases that you need to practice. One example is a friend of mine that keeps getting "buenas noches" wrong. He keeps saying "buenos noches." I would encourage him to write out a conversation with the words in it and read the lines. It would be like practicing a script.
Yet another idea is to choose a paragraph written in Spanish. Write the sentences out separately in sentence form and number the sentences. This gets you close enough to the paragraph to see how it is constructed. It helps you to see how the sentences are constructed too. You can practice the sentences separately. It will help you get more comfortable with the paragraph itself. Try it! You'll have the mechanics of Spanish down after working with a number of paragraphs in this way.
I hope you like these ideas and use them when you are playing Spanish solitaire.

I found a couple of sites that use podcasts to teach Spanish. So I thought I would share them with you. One of them is on the subject of the greeting "que tal." That you can listen to on the blog, myspanishnotes.blogspot.com The other podcasts are on the site
notesinspanish.com You don't need books or paper. All you need is a listening ear. A couple, Ben and Marina, take you through the podcasts. They have intermediate to advanced listening levels. You can find this couple on youtube also. Just do a search for "Ben Curtis."
If you feel like taking notes, no one can stop you. I would take notes when listening to new material. That way you have concrete matter with which to handle. You can take notes when listening to "noticias" (news) or to telenovelas. You can take notes while reading the "noticias" too. If you hear snatches of Spanish conversations you don't understand, take notes about them and ask people later about what it all means. An example is that of an online friend of mine. He kept hearing the word "donde" frequently and never knew what it meant. He found out from me that it means "where."
I hope you like podcasts and news and learn Spanish from them. Jot down all your notes and study them later.

Want to create a word bank for Spanish words? All you need is a box such as a shoe box or other box, a pair of scissors, and paper. Collect words you have recently learned and write them on paper. Cut them up and put them in the box. You can inspect it monthly to see how many words you have learned.
You can also cut up words you see in a newspaper. Keep two columns titled, "words I know" and "words I don't know." Choose words you know and write them on paper. You can make it an activity to learn the words you don't know and eventually add them to the word bank.
Keep a tally of how many words you learn in a month. It will be exciting to see your progress each month.
Saving words will become a natural habit, and you will be surprised at how much you can really learn.

A pagragraph is like a sea of words. It's a rectangular block of words that are mixed with regular words along with articles, prepositions, adverbs, pronouns, etc Imagine that you are diving into the paragraph looking for words. How many of them do you know? How many don't you know? Choose the words that are chunky, not the little ones that cement the other words in place.
Choose a Spanish book or a newspaper. Look at a paragraph and pretend it's a sea and you're diving for words. It will be interesting to put them in columns titled, "Words I Know" and "Words I Don't Know."
Take the words you don't know and go to the web and type in "Sentence Maker Spanish." When you get the page of the sentence maker, type in the words you don't know one at a time. Can you figure out what the word means from the sentence that is given? Use the other words in the sentence to give you clues.
This is an interesting way to get close to words and paragraphs. It will help you pay attention to detail and to focus. Sentences are also like beads. The words are strung together in order. The way the writer puts the words together is creative and artistic.
You can also create your own sentences with the new words you discover.
Find a sea and dive in! You'll love discovering new words.

I try to go to places where I will find Spanish words I don't know. Today, I read passages from the Holy Bible in Spanish. There were a lot of words there that I didn't know. So everything was new to me. The words were like little mysteries I had to solve.
What is this word? What does it mean? Also, there was the satisfaction of finding out and knowing what the words meant. I looked in the Book of Proverbs which is chock full of these mystery words. Two words I really liked were "colinas" and "sabiduria."
Another place you can find new words in Spanish is in menus at restaurants. The meal itself is a mystery, because you don't yet know what the words mean. When you order the food, then you know what the words or phrases meant to say. You can also ask the waiter or waitress to explain the words in the menu. That is a great way to immerse yourself in the language.
Mystery words, then, are something you can always look at when you are anywhere on the globe. I want to look at travel magazines in Spanish or any other magazines in Spanish. They would be chock full of new mystery words also.
I hope I have piqued your interest in finding mystery words to solve. You get to be a detective and solve a whole lot of cases this way. Remember every new word is a mystery
to solve.